Through the first 14 games of this Trail Blazers season, the team's big free-agent acquisition has found himself stuck wondering whether he should shoot, or whether he should pass. He has been caught between being himself – freelancing with some shake-and-bake moves – or being what he thinks his coach wants – to set up a play and execute. Through it all, he has worried whether he is stepping on the toes of his teammates by taking shots.

It has produced an up-and-down start, with bursts of scoring followed by longer droughts of missed shots and turnovers.

It also produced a smirk and a chuckle from Joe Johnson inside the Atlanta Hawks' locker room.

"I'm pretty sure I understand what he is going through," Johnson said.

Johnson knows because he saw the same thing from Crawford two seasons ago when Crawford joined the Hawks. He was tentative. Afraid to ruffle feathers. And nowhere near the scoring tornado they had played against and watched for nearly a decade in the league.

After one early season game in Atlanta, the soft-spoken Johnson had seen enough. The All-Star confronted Crawford in the locker room.

"I thought he came here being just a little too cautious, and I told him, 'Hey! You gotta be that scorer who plays with reckless abandon. You can't worry who you are out there on the floor with, you still have to be you. You can't turn and be someone else. You have to be that aggressive Jamal Crawford."

"This is a similar situation," Crawford said of his start in Portland. "Joe pulled me aside and said 'Man, forget that. You gotta be the player you have been. We can't have you just trying to fit in and tiptoe around. We need you to be the guy you have been; that's why we brought you here."

The rest, as they say, is history. Crawford started playing more freely. And he started to produce. So much so that he went on to be voted the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year that season.

"Before you knew it, he was dropping games of 20s and 30s like it was nothing," Johnson harrumphed.

By coincidence, when the Blazers arrived in Atlanta on Tuesday, there was a similar message delivered to Crawford. Coach Nate McMillan told him to quit thinking and just play. McMillan proclaimed to Crawford and the media that he was going to "let him go." And co-captain LaMarcus Aldridge said he continued a nearly weeklong effort to get Crawford to relax and play.

"It's hard at first when you go to a different team, and a different system," said Crawford, who is with his fifth team in 12 seasons. "They already have things in place. You come in and you are almost like the new kid in school, you don't want to make any enemies. But it will come, I will promise you. It will come, for sure."

Crawford on Wednesday played more freely but still had mixed results. He had 22 points, but needed to take 22 shots. He was in the middle of the Blazers' comeback, scoring 14 points in the fourth and he finished the game with five assists. At times, Crawford looked like the player who has scored 50 points three times in his career and who won the 2010 Sixth Man Award.

But, as Crawford quickly pointed out after the game, the Blazers lost. It might have been a step, but it wasn't a big enough step.

The acclimation of Crawford into the Blazers system figures to feature some cringes. He is notorious for taking a lot of shots, many of them ill-advised against good defense or from tough angles. Crawford refuses to call them bad shots, preferring rather to call them "tough" shots.

"To the core, I'm a scorer," Crawford said. "And the thing that is a little unique about me is tough shots have never really been tough shots for me. And especially if you are not used to seeing it. I mean, even B-Roy would say 'That's a tough one 'Mal ... but you do make tough shots.' So it kind of comes with the territory."

McMillan said he is coming to grips with who Crawford is — a high-volume shooter who will take shots outside of the offense.

"That's who he is," McMillan said. "They go in sometimes, and sometimes they don't. But if you are going to truly let him go, you have to live with some of those shots."

A career 41 percent shooter, Crawford is shooting 34.5 percent this season. He has been through slumps before in his career and he has always come out of them. And he has been tentative and cautious with new teams before, only to break out with great success.

"It will come. I know it will. There will be one day when it will just click," Crawford said. "I've done it in stretches this season. But it will become more consistent. I promise."